Wednesday, August 27, 2008

David Wood vs. Ali Ataie: "Who Was Muhammad?"

Here's a debate I did a long time ago at the University of California. The topic was "Who Was Muhammad? The Christian and Muslim Perspectives." If you'd like to have some fun while you're watching the debate, pull out a piece of paper and try writing down Ali's arguments for the Prophethood of Muhammad. You'll need about one line.

I can't see the videos. I've tried IE7 and Firefox. I've downloaded the lateste Adobe Flash Player and it's still just empty white frames. Any suggestions? (I can see all of the YouTube and GoogleVideo videos.)

escape answering about islamignore their own sourcesprovide another interpretation to their quran, hadith and scholars !!

I dont know what christianity would do in a debae about muhammed, several time he goes of topic asking about christianity !!!

He abuses the bible, mutilating texts,﻿ getting it out of context, and never tried to read any commentaries before he argue

doesnt this prove how weak islam is ?! and how ignorant muslims are !!

1. Having a 15 years age difference , gives Khadija the upper hand, specially she was wealthy and bussiness women. So logically﻿ mohamed couldnt marry another or have polygamy, otherwise he will lose a lot.

2. When Khadija died , mhamed aven't reached menopause, so he married a lot cuz of lust deisre as he was still sexually young

3. Not all of his marriages were political, yes few were, what about the rest ?!

4. U stil didnt get the point, it is not about polygamy as much as it is of having more privelege, abusing the﻿ quran

5. U say exceptional, well ok we can understand this in a view of prophecy and sprituality with Allah. But not in terms of hypersexulality and marrying more than the limited number.

6 Ali ... This debate has nothing to do with christianity, Havent you read the name ? cant u understand ?!! it was supposed to be about Muhammed ?!! so no time to discuss christianity in this debate, .... btw werent u te one who choose the topic , is this how u prefer for a topic about muhammed by reading the bible ?????

imagine how many people wanted to know about muhammed in this debate, but you know what ppl realized, that it is soooo weak, not able t answer a single question ,, all the time about christianity, And the fact that ppl also understands that this not about christianity, so they would actully encourage David to answer you and go off topic like you. Thanks David that you tried to adhere to the context of the debate as possible.

if no Jesus , No christianity !!opposite is true for islam, it is buit upon quran and Sunna !!! so hitting any of these, u will fall down.

But no matter what you hit in christianity, doesnt matter!! havent you seen even if there are Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant.. and all these sects, with some different ideas... doesnt matter for them... why ?!! it is all about christ !!! and thats why satan focused on in your quran, 600 years later, after he failed using tortures, and then Hertics ... he brought up islam comining both hertic and persecution ... but see , christianity still and will remain strong :)

So let me tell you, say whatever you want about the bible , or whatever Jesus did or said ,,,, But since Jesus Deity is well proven everywhere even in your quran, and everywhere, so he is God untill proven otherwise !!

Thats what he said about himself he is the corner stone.

Dont get me wrong, The bible is the word of God ... but in order to prove it wrong, first prove that jesus wrong , get it !!

Wow, this was a good debate. Enjoyed it a lot. I thought Ali was the first Muslim I've heard who *sounded* anywhere near as compelling as his opponent(*sounded* because actually his arguments weren't very good when you break them down).

I notice that his positive case for the prophethood of Muhammad was 'he was a really nice guy' - but of course, we have plenty evidence that says otherwise, and he gave no compelling reason not to believe it. He told a couple of flattering stories about Mo but gave no sources. The rest of the time he simply bashed Christianity, really, despite everyone in the room knowing this tactic is a fallacy. Even if I were to become utterly convinced by him of Christianity's falsehood, he gave me no real positive case for Muhammad; in fact, if I know that the more reliabale New Testament is false, how can I ever trust the sources on Muhammad? I can only conclude that beyond 'Muhammad sounds a bit like an old Jewish word in the Bible, doesn't it?' and 'if you take out all the bad stuff he did, he was good', there isn't a case for his prophethood. There are surely big implications for Christianity and Islam that anytime there's a debate about Islam, Christianity ends up as the topic of discussion.

Something I actually found rather disturbing was Ali on Aisha:

1. She was a confident girl, so she must have been reasonably happy to have sex with an old man. ...Well I just hope the police don't take this line in their investigations over in the USA.

I also know from watching other debates and reading stuff he's written, David could have refuted much of what Ali said about Christianity quite easily, but I believe he didn't because he was trying to stick to topic, something Ali didn't care about.

David--you were spectacular in the debate. Ali, as I predicted, used an ad hominem approach because there is just no way Islam can be defended if you know about the idea of abrogation and sharia law. I think your work is great, and this is coming from an atheist who is open-minded to the argument presented. I know you're aware of the danger in what you're doing so please be careful.

God never told anyone to rape women. I usually never answer any lies about God but this one is simply disgusting. He should be ashamed of such a disgusting lie. If a man found a woman he liked among the captured women, he was to marry her.

Acts 3 shows Deuteronomy 18:18 is about Jesus not muhammad and it says this prophet would be among your bretheren. Since Moses is speaking to Israelites, he obviously means this prophet in Deuteronomy was going to be an Israelite. Ishmael and the other children of concubines were sent to the east to be apart from Isaac. Ishmael became a pagan nation and cut himself out of the Israelite promises.

Jesus' name is actually in the Old Testament. (Is 52:10) The LORD hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.... "salvation of our God" in the Hebrew is Yeshua (Jesus in English). And the arm of the Lord is revealed also as Jesus in Is 53:1 which is the chapter about Jesus' prophesized crucifixion. Jesus is also Immanuel in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, Gabriel confirms and says Jesus is Immanuel (Mt 1:23)

david i think u shuould have answered the "falsification test of mark 16:17-18"..u have done a worst job in the question answer session to some extent..i had so much hopes only on u and sam..but somehow im trying to lose hopes on u..now sam is the only person on whom i can count..if sam would have been instead of u in that Q&A round,he would have answered each and every question in detail..!i find his answers unbeatable sometimes..he always does a good job..there are millions of people who have hopes on apologists like u guys but i dint expect this from u david..im sorry to say that..!people like me base their hopes only on u guys becoz u guys do a great job in refuting al the claims against christianity..now its only sam on whom i can count from now on..if its true that,the verses(falsification test) in mark16 are added up later in the bible then i begin to doubt the bible..because i have to only trust the original single manuscript which the disciples wrote but not on the bible in which verses are added up..as we all know that we havent got the single original bible..then its like i have to doubt the christianity..now i have to pray to the only god who is(if) up there to reveal the truth becoz who knows these scribes may also made some corrections about jesus divinity according to their thoughts..u see david how difficult it is for people like me..i started researching from 1 year ago..i also check websites(answering-islam,carm,abnsat,etc..)..just counting on sam..

u dint know how to answer the question about mark 16:17-18..check out the rebuttal of sam here http://www.answering-islam.org/Responses/Osama/zawadi_true_believer.htm u are not as good as sam..i was disappointed with ur answer to that..ur answer is totally different than sam's because he does not believe in a bible in which verses are added up later..but rather he believes the bible is the true word of GOD..and he successfully made a convincing rebuttal to that question..check that link..

u dint know how to answer the question about mark 16:17-18..check out the rebuttal of sam here http://www.answering-islam.org/Responses/Osama/zawadi_true_believer.htm u are not as good as sam..i was disappointed with ur answer to that..ur answer is totally different than sam's because he does not believe in a bible in which verses are added up later..but rather he believes the bible is the true word of GOD..and he successfully made a convincing rebuttal to that question..check that link..

I find it a good debate and it's obvious where ali get his argument from. Ahmad Deedat. I believe in a new debate Ali would use these arguments not again. It was very embarrassing to see how he always skip to the OT when he was in trouble and avoiding very carefully to compare Jesus with Muhammad. He always come up with the prophets of the OT.Maybe David, you can ask him the next time what the divine name of the biblical God is. Then ask him or he did know what the name of Jesus means, Jesus in which he also believes. The name Jesus means Yahweh is God. Even the Quran contains the name of Jesus aka Isa. I often use this argument against muslims and when i showed them this they got really speechless.Just a tip.

Ezra the Babylonian priest/scribe Jew, was commissioned by Cyrus to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem & establish a Jewish for of Zoroastrianism. He rewrote the Law of Moses, added books of myth, like Esther, Song of Solomon, corrupted the books of the Prophets (see Jeremiah ch 7; ch 8:8) & got the Pharisees to collate & canonize them into the Jewish Bible. They added the Oral Tradition, thereby creating Talmudic Judaism, which Jesus CONDEMNED (Matthew ch 15; ch 19; ch 23; John 8:43-47).

Pip, you are incorrect. Jesus had no problem with the Old Testament itself; in fact, in Matthew 5:17-18, Jesus affirmed the authority of the "Law and The Prophets" (what we call the OT today), claimed that He is the fulfillment of them, and then said that "not one jot or tittle" would pass from them until all is fulfilled. What Jesus condemned were the extra-Biblical Jewish traditions (such as those found in the Mishnah and Talmud). These were commentaries that rabbis had written up as a way to interpret the Old Testament. However, these commentaries began to be falsely equated with the Law when Jesus came, and they contradicted Scripture in several places, so Jesus had to correct them. None of those traditions, however, found their way into the Torah itself; they were, and still are, kept separate from the Old Testament.

As for the verse in Jeremiah 8:8, Sam Shamoun wrote an article about this, where he concluded that "a careful examination of the context in Jeremiah shows that the verse Jeremiah 8:8 does not speak of a textual corruption by the scribes that left us only with a corrupted Torah. The Torah always was and continued to remain accessible. The issue was severe misinterpretations."

The idea that Judaism was corrupted by Zoroastrianism is completely in error. It is true that some of the Jews prior to the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC had gotten mixed up in the zodiac (as indicated by Jeremiah). However, when the Jews came back from the captivity under Ezra, they fully returned to the Law of Moses and rid themselves of corruption. They removed any corrupting influences such as the pagan wives that some of the Jewish men had married during their Babylonian captivity.

Hi David I recently saw a video of Ataie making some very very bad claims about Islamic Spain and I wanted to respond to him about them. As you debated him I was hoping you had his email so I could email him my response. I looked on his website but cannot find it anywhere. If you do not want to give it out to somebody you do not know perhaps you could just pass on my response to his utter lies.

You claim :1 The Christians massacred the Jews and Muslims wholesale in Islamic Spain? That is not true. The inquisition just investigated fake Jewish and Islamic converts to Christianity alone not those who had not converted. There were many fake converts who converted out of expediency after the success of the reconquista. Secondly they did not kill everyone scholars think they killed around 2% of those they investigated and place the number between 3000-5000. Yes what they did was wrong but this is not wholesale murder that is a pure dawah lie.2 You seem to forget all the atrocities the Muslim Moors committed against Jews in Islamic spain such as the 1066 Granada pogrom where 4000 Jews were massacred up until I think the second crusade this was the biggest pogrom committed on European soil. What about the 1011 Cordoba massacre of 2000 Jews? What about the 1033 massacre of 6000 jews in Fez Morocco by the Moors? What about the 1276 Pogrom in Fez which killed thousands or the later 1465 pogrom which was so vicious that it left only 11 Jews alive. Bearing in mind all this who are you to call it a paradise or complain about the inquisition you hypocrite!

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